Jrnl Entry No. 9.13.2000 “MY HIP HOP STORY” PART II

Then we started moving on to bigger and better Hip Hop concerts like at The Front Row in Cleveland, OH. They (Samuel, Clay, Shaneequa, Shaniece) had tickets already. I didn’t have my ticket and had no clue how I was gonna get one. I had planned on standing outside until they came out. It was the summer before I entered the ninth grade, and I was freshly dipped in my Korea Fila suit that no one in my town had ever seen before. I also had a satiny Adidas one. I knew nothing about ticket scalpers. So I was standing there in line, and a guy asked me if I needed a ticket, I said “yeah.” He got his boy and they sold me one for $30.

The concert was legendary. A Fresh Fest starring LL Cool J performing fresh off his platinum Bigger and Deffer album. The other groups were: Stetsasonic, Public Enemy, Eric B & Rakim, Dougie Fresh & The Get Fresh Crew, and Whodini. The way The Front Row was designed was stadium seating and you could see from back to front. It was a circular hall with a rotating stage. I remember at the end of the concert Estacy of Whodini complimented me on my Fila suit. There was a second show so most all the rappers were hanging out by the tour buses. LL was probably on one of his sexual episodes because he was nowhere to be seen. He was the big star anyway so he couldn’t come outside. The next show we went to was also in Cleveland, a Fat Boys show, featuring U.T.F.O. U.T.F.O. rocked the house, doing dance moves and what not. This was the biggest concert hall I’d ever been in. This was like my third time seeing The Fat Boys. They were performing their “Chrushin’´album which I had bought that summer.

There was something about U.T.F.O.’s performance that struck me and made me want to become a rapper who performed out on tour. When I got back home that night, which was a Sunday, and school was the next morning, I wrote my first rap song called “Dance”. I finished it at like 1:00 AM. I wrote another song about two days later which included my cousin Donavan. It was called Doc and Don, describing how two guys treated girls; me treating a girl kind, and Donavan treating a girl cruel. We rehearsed the song, but Donavan didn’t take it serious. I eventually a month later, took his name out the song, and just made it as another personality of me.

My older cousin Mantrix had a little recording studio down in his basement. He said he’d charge me $25 to make a tape of the two songs. I had produced two little beats in my head and beat boxed them onto a tape to rehearse the songs before I went to the studio. I had one problem though, my mom said that she was not going to give me the $25 to do the tape. Well, that problem was easily overcome. I made the appointment to do the tape and I just stole the money out of my mom’s purse. She found out and asked me about it. The last whipping I had was when I was 12. She wasn’t mad or anything, she didn’t do nothing, but she still mentions it to me to this day.

So I went to my cousin’s studio. He had a Casio little drum machine that he didn’t know how to program. I called Clay and asked him how to program it because he had the same one. He explained something to me and I tried it. I had the sequence going but the beat wouldn’t come out right. I just played it manually. I played the whole drum track from pad to pad: bass, hi hat, clap, hi hat, bass, clap, open hi hat. I still know how that beat goes. I did the vocals, overdubbing the whole song, to give it a stronger voice my cousin said. The songs were pretty wack for the most part. The second song with the two personalities was the better of the two. I had my cousin play the bass guitar. It was the bass line from LL’s “I’m Bad”. I didn’t think about it at the time when making it, but that’s what it was as others pointed out to me when I let them listen to it.

When the tape was finished, I went over to Samuel’s house and got addresses off of the back of his records to record companies. I had like twenty addresses. I sent the tapes off with just one stamp on them. About two days later, they all came back “insufficient postage”. The maintenance man had them all in a bucket and gave them to me. I put like two more stamps on them and sent them off again. I probably got about two of those infamous letters in the mail like six weeks later. “Thanks for submitting your material, however, at this time we are not looking for new material.” I’d always get a letter back from Profile Records. I got one back from Virgin Records saying they didn’t accept unsolicited material. I called their office to ask what that meant. They told me it had to be submitted by a lawyer.

Later that year I got hooked up with some guy, who was a beginner DJ by the name of Nelson. We got hooked up through some guy who talked a bunch of shit like he was a manager. He even had me do this one song for Nelson’s brother like I was auditioning or something. Nelson’s brother named Remmington was just a working man with a wife and kidz. But Nelson and I hooked up and he was the DJ and I was the rapper. We later named ourselves TWC (The Warren Crew). Nelson had two turntables and a mixer with a little button on it to help with transformer scratching. He had basically taken over his cousin’s little Casio sampler. I think Prince Paul used the same sampler on the De La Three Feet High and Rising” album because I heard the lion roar on the album, the same lion roar from that little sampler.

Jrnl Entry No. 9.13.2000 “MY HIP HOP STORY” PART I

It all started as a bud when my cousin Samuel met his first cousin on his dad’s side by the name of Clay. Clay had DJ equipment and was for the most part he just messed around in his room. This was like back in 1984/1985. Clay could scratch and transformer scratch, actually the first person I ever saw do it. We’d go over Clay’s house on the weekends and hang with him and his cousin Ricky. Clay had many records and at that time, it seemed like all the records he had were on the Tommy Boy label. Def Jam had a few bullshit records like the one’s by Jazzy Jay whoever the hell he was. I remember this one particular record on Def Jam. It was either Russel Simmons or Jazzy Jay, they may have been the same person who knows. But he was just talking shit on the record over a beat.

We hung together all summer long, Clay, Ricky, Samuel and I. Our main mission was to get some pussy. Clay was a virgin, I was a virgin, and Ricky was a virgin. Samuel was about the only one who had pussy on his dick because he was the oldest. We hung out over by Delaware and Jackson Street which was where Samuel’s father lived at the time. We hung out in the Palmyra Heights, which was where Clay lived. That summer, I met Tina, Sandra, Sydonia, Lavonia, Pam, Reena, Marlette, Wendy and the three girls who had the white Honda Spree Scooters. They were like the only people in the whole entire town with Scooters period.

Occasionally, our little gang would go swimming at Packard Park. It was then that I met Carla and her sister whose name, I forget her name, and I also met Shay who I instantly feel in love with. Shay was the most beautifullest thing. She was mixed, and in 1985, you know most niggaz was brainwashed to think that the lighter the skin and the thinner the hair, the better the person. Don’t get me wrong, even though she is a lot heavier now, Shay is still beautiful. Those days at the local pool were the good old dayz. Many Black people at the pool chillin; teenagers dunkin’ each other and shit like that; feelin’ the girls up under the water.

As summer passed, we were all still virgins. Clay’s Djing interest eventually had all of us interested in Djing and learning how to scratch. Samuel’s mom had bought him two turntables, a mixer, and a microphone, and he started buying 12 inches and albums with his extra money. I dabbled a little with the scratching. I could catch the record on beat and do a little scratch routine and then let it go. I remember my first record experimenting with scratching was Sugar Hill Gang “8^th Wonder”. I used to go over Samuel’s house with like really cheap 90 minute tapes, like 3 for $1.99 from Woolworth is where I used to get them. I would record albums, and most albums would fit on one side of a 90 minute tape, so I’d put two albums on one tape. Let’s see, I had albums by UTFO, Boogie Boys, Skinny Boys, Fat Boys, Dougie Fresh and the Get Fresh Crew. I remember Samuel coming over to my house bragging about how dope the first Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince album was. He was telling me about how Ready Rock C could beat box so well, etc. He was right, I taped the album and it was the bomb, especially the beat box song that started like “When we rock the house there is no doubt / that me and Ready C will turn it out.” That was the shit!

I also would record many twelve inch singles at the end of the albums when there was room left on the tape. Shit like “We’re Only Buggin”, “Listen Up”, Dana Dane’s “Nightmares” and “Delancey Street”, Sweet Tee’s many twelve inch singles she had out before she put them all on one album like four years later. This was also when I recognized the name, Produced by Herby “Luv Bug” Azor as the guy making the, always funky, beats for Salt & Pepa, Dana Dane and Sweet Tee. I still have these tapes to this day.

During the course of time, the idea had come about to throw parties in Clay’s basement. Samuel and them came up with a name for themselves and got some sweatshirts made with an airbrush design, and the parties began at $.50 a head, and $.25 for soda. At the end of each party they would count up the money and split it like five ways between Samuel, Clay and Ricky, Samuel’s sister Shaneequa and Clay’s sister Shaniece. The parties got to be well known too. Every weekend they were packed. Samuel, Clay and Ricky were the DJ’s. This was around the time when LL COOL J ‘s “Radio” single dropped, and “Rock The Bell” was the shit. Ready For The World was the group to slow dance to the song “Let Me Love You Down”. I was always like the youngest one at these parties. I remember I would always slow dance with this one girl because we were like the only two left not dancing. I liked Sandra but she was going with this older guy Tim and he always had her on the floor or grinding and kissing on her on the basement wall. The parties were going well until the Beta Boys started fucking it up and fighting. The Beta Boys, well the only one I really remember was William and his brother Lester. It was about five or six of them total. One night they tore up the wall paneling of the basement. From that weekend on, there were no more parties thrown.

We’d (Shaniece, Samuel and Shaneequa, Clay and me and Ricky and Ricky’s sister) all go to concerts together. The first concerts being the ones at The Star Palace in Youngstown, OH. We seen Salt & Pepa, Heavy D & The Boyz, The Fat Boys, and Salt & Pepa, and Heavy D &The Boyz again. I wonder if Heavy D or Salt & Pepa remember The Star Palace.

Jrnl Entry No. 11.29.1999

It’s Monday after Thanksgiving day weekend. All last week Sausha was at my house in NY. I can tell by her attitude that she does not really feel N.Y. Maybe she would feel it much better if she didn’t have her kidz so we could go out and do more things together. Yeah, she brought Rykell and Heaven with her to my house.

You know what I’m discovering is that I don’t like kidz that are not my own, especially two year olds like Rykell. I can remember when Marielle was two years old. I hated her with a passion just like I hate Rykell. Two year olds just get on your nerves with their temper tantrums when they can’t get there way. They don’t do nothing you tell them to do without crying. I remember when I first started dating Sausha, Rykell had the loudest mouth I had ever heard from a child. That was when my hate for him developed. He was just like a big-headed cartoon character when he would cry. Heaven, she is cute but she does little shit that gets on my nerves also. When you tell her what to do she will do it, but right after she does it, she will reverse her action and do what you told her not to do. Shameek with his little punk ass, he didn’t want to come. I think he doesn’t like the fact that I am dating his mom and getting some of his attention so most of the time he wants to be over his aunts house. I like Shameek, but he is a little punk with the way he cries every time he can’t get his way. And he is scared to go anywhere in the house by himself. Any other time he is acting grown, but ask him to go and get some tissue, and he will be like “come on Heaven.” And if she doesn’t come he will start saying to his mom, “Heavin ain’t comin’.”

And I guess it all boils down to the fact that no one is going to love what is not there own. Sure I would look out for them and take good care of them if Sausha and I were to stay together, but when they wine and have tempers, I hate it the most and just feel like stomping them right in their chest. Shameek listens for the most part, Heaven listens three fourth the time, and Rykell listens but crys all the time. LL COOL J said that his step father used to abuse him, and he probably did it for the same reasons that I feel like abusing Sausha kidz sometimes. It is because in the presence of their mom, they don’t listen to me. Like when Rykell gets out of the bed at night and I direct him to go back to bed, he’ll go around me and go to his mom and she will tell him the same thing, and he’ll run in his room and start crying. Its like the kidz don’t pay you any attention. And they sometimes get their way unnecessarily. And I’m mostly talking about Rykell and Shameek. Like I think she should break Shameek from that scared shit and make him go upstairs by himself. He is grown when it comes to everthing else, let him grow out of that. But what can I say, nothing. I think she needs to let Rykell grow out of not wanting to share anything or everytime some one picks up a toy, he starts crying for it, and Sausha tells whoever to give him the toy. So he thinks all he has to do is cry and he will get his way. But what can I say, nothing. Now she treats Heaven like shit, and that’s why I always pay her the most attention and answer her stupid little questions whenever she asks them. It’s like the only way you get some control is when their mom is not around, and when you get that control, because you’ve been ignored for so long, you want to abuse that control.

But I probably won’t have to deal with this situation because Sausha told me yesterday that our relationship is not working, and I agree with her. Its not working for me because of her kidz, and because she is not sexy enough for me, and because she has no idea how she is going to make her life better. Well she has an idea but for that idea to become a reality, its going to be a long shot. And I was thinking of moving her and the kidz with me and ask my mom to come and be our baby sitter, but I don’t want all those people living with me. I don’t think I want Sausha living with me. She does little shit that I don’t like and there is nothing about her to make up for her mis-haps. She leaves food on her dishes in the sink instead of rinsing them out. She frys stuff sloppily getting grease all over the stove. Just little shit that bugs me, and on top of that, the kidz bug me too. That is too much bugging for me to be happy so be it. I don’t even want an explanation from her, I’m just going about my way. She’ll probably call me next weekend and want to talk, but I will have nothing to say. I am not getting back together with her. Its over.

I got this honeys number this weekend at the 89 Harding and Reserve Class Reunion. And it’s a good thing that Sausha did break up with me yesterday because she was sure to find out some way that I got this girls number. The girl whose name is Kaylah is cousins with Sheryl who has a baby by Thyrck who likes Sausha when he has no one else to like. Sheryl heard my name and she started asking me was I the one who used to go with Sausha. And she was telling me how Thyrck used to talk about me. So I know she will tell Thyrck who is in jail that I got her cousin’s number, and he somehow is going to call Sausha and tell her. But since we are broke up it doesn’t matter.

Now Kaylah is 21, a little younger than what I’m looking for, but I like her. I talked to her on the phone last night when I got back to N.Y. from Warren. She is going to Syracuse University in New York. She is funny and she is kind of fine from what I could see at the class reunion party. Of course she has her natural hair and a natural face like I like it you know. She tells me that Syracuse is only 3 hours away from Queen NYC so I’m going to go and check her out one Saturday. She says she will be graduating in June. She has her own car, a Honda Accord so she can come and check me out sometimes also. I’ll see where this goes.

I met this chick named Melonie about two weeks ago at Club Ivy. She had a cute little ass. I haven’t called her in two weeks because Sausha came home with me last week. But I’ll call her this week and tell her that I went on vacation and left her number here in N.Y. She lives by herself in N.J. and works as a quality assurance operator who listens to when people call the phone company. She talks kind of proper and sounds adult like. I’m gonna get that ass though.

She says she used to be wild but now she has settled down a bit. Yeah, we’ll see how soon I can get my dick in her mouth. She told me she was on birth control. That could be a trick to get pregnant and get child support money. I’ll probably bust a couple nuts in her ass. I don’t know. Which reminds me again. When I get some free days, I need to consult a doctor about getting my balls cut so as to not have anymore kidz. Fuck having kidz because that shit kills you in the end if things don’t work out.

I’ll work with these two girls for a while if I can. I’ll probably start calling Rhonda again and try to get a couple of good fucks out of her. I think Rhonda just wants a man with a good job so she can just work at Marshalls the rest of her life making a little money while her husband makes the majority of the doe. She is kind of lazy, and then she is not lazy. She can look beautiful when she wants to and that is why I always think about her because she looks beautiful, she really looks good to me like the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. But on some days she looks fat, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with a fat bitch.

No more two or three kidz in my relationships from now on out; I’m done with that shit. Lauren had three kidz, Sausha had three kidz. I’ve learned that I don’t like it. Them bitches was stupid enough to have three kidz without a sure-fire way of taking care of them then that’s their fault. Before I used to think that kidz don’t matter but yes they do. With three kidz life is gonna be hard whether they are mine of not. Why should I suffer for someone else mistakes.

And speaking of three kidz, I wonder how Ronika feels now. After her and her sister used to talk all that shit about me dating Sausha with three kidz and Sausha living in the ghetto. Now Ronika is going around telling people that her kidz father won’t marry her, and she lives in Trumbull Holmes and he lives on Oak street, and she has his three daughters. Now she is just like Sausha. She has three kidz by one man who she is not married to. And chances are that she will not get married to him. See that is exactly why I don’t talk about or make fun of any ones bad situation because it could happen to me.

I probably would have stayed with Lauren because of that good pussy that I could just bust nuts in because her tubes were tied. I still haven’t ran into no pussy like that or someone with an ass as nice as hers. Yeah I did love Lauren’s body. If it wasn’t for the stretch marks and the little sagging tidys, she would have one of the banginest bodies ever.

My boss talked to me again about being late to work because I got here at 8:15 AM because of a traffic jam right where I was supposed to get off and come to work. I would have been on time if it hadn’t been for the little traffic jam. I see his plan though to verbally warn me about every thing he has the chance to. He’s trying to make me feel inferior so I won’t ask for that much money when its time for my review. That is exactly why I’m getting the hell out of here when I get some time off. I am not happy on this job. I need to find the company that I am interested in so that I can really start being productive. I need to find me an apartment for cheaper too so I can have some money in my pocket and maybe save a little. My shit is together but it needs to be a little more tighter. I’m gon’ make it happen though